KEY POINTS:
Native hunters have begun an operation to spear to death up to 80 beluga whales trapped in a frozen waterway on the Arctic coast of Canada.
The whales were trapped after a snowstorm closed off the long inland waterway and reduced the number of breathing holes in the surface ice from eight to just one.
"They have set off today to set up camp and to start the hunt," Lila Voudrach, of the Tuktoyaktuk Harvest and Trappers Committee, told The Independent, speaking by telephone.
"They will set up camp alongside the ice."
Tuktoyaktuk is Canada's most northerly mainland community.
Inuit officials had decided it would be virtually impossible to relocate the trapped animals because of the size of the waterway, which stretches through a string of lakes for up to 25 miles.
Given the lack of other opportunities, the hunters said they considered killing the animals an act of mercy.
Paul Voudrach, chairman of the committee, who set out to start killing the animals yesterday, had previously told the Reuters news agency: "There's no more options except to harvest them. We don't want them to suffer, we don't want them to starve, and the breathing holes will eventually close up."
The Inuit had first noticed a pod of 200 whales in the Husky Lakes waterway, also known as Eskimo Lakes, which flows to the Beaufort Sea, in August.
Since then, members of the community, along with officials from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, have been monitoring the animals to see if they would make it out to sea on their own.
In late October, when the whales were last counted and ice was beginning to form, there were around 80 of the mammals remaining.
Normally they leave the area for the Bering sea by August.
Apparently whales are infrequent visitors to the Husky Lakes waterway.
Mr Voudrach said the last time they came was in 1994, and before that in 1989.
On that last occasion hunters waited too long to harvest 125 trapped belugas, and by the time they were speared and pulled on to the ice there was barely any blubber left to be salvaged.
In the current operation, the team of 10, including eight hunters, will harpoon the whales one by one as they come up for air, before they are shot.
The whales' blubber will be cut upon the ice and then stored for the local community.
The operation is expected to last two weeks.
Whales provide an important nutritional component of the diet of Inuit and Inupiat communities in Canada and Alaska.
But in addition the hunting of the animals and the sharing of their meat and blubber serves an important cultural role and pulls the community together.
The meat and blubber is generally served simply boiled and is known as muktuk.
Some communities prepare a mixture of whalemeat, blubber, blood and pieces of tongue that are stirred together in a bucket and left to ferment.
This delicacy is known as mimakiaq and considered ready to eat when the contents start to bubble.
Despite their love of whalemeat, local people had reportedly been cheering on the animals, encouraging them to escape.
"[People] don't like seeing animals suffer. Right now we are looking to take all of them that we can," said Mr Voudrach.
- INDEPENDENT
